


Counting Scars

by sovereignty



Category: Mass Effect
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-27
Updated: 2016-02-27
Packaged: 2018-05-23 13:21:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6117697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sovereignty/pseuds/sovereignty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the midst of a war, you can tally a lot more than just shots...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Counting Scars

**Author's Note:**

> This is something completely different for me. It's rare that I write anything longer than ficlets and posting them, even more so, but this series and this idea grabbed hold of me and they're not letting go. So here we are. Enjoy~

It was a game, he realized too little too late, from beneath the shadow of the Mako's chassis with a face full of piping and electrical wiring and the acrid punch of stale exhaust. Oh, and the dressed down figure of his commanding officer currently navigating the cramped maze of the engine block with a kind of flexibility and grace that would be tantamount to legend on Palaven. On Earth, he suspected, it was just another human thing.

“It's the manifold alright. Damn thing's cracked clean in two.”

Her voice echoed from above even as the faulty pieces rained down. He didn't even flinch as one narrowly missed his fringe. He never had much of a reason to concern himself with the human body before serving on one of their ships, never had a reason to consider them much at all beyond the occasional job that required some cooperation. But Shepard had a way of making herself a concern; of wriggling into your life with her ‘do you have a minute’s and ‘anything I should know’s as fluidly as she worked her way into the underbelly of their infantry vehicle to finish a job that would have taken him twice as long and left him with three times the headache. Not that he would have complained; but there were two parts to commanding officer. Shepard just worked both of them to their limits and no one aboard was immune.

With Wrex it was less of a game and more of a show. Posturing, she called it. Butt heads with the guy to feel him out in a way only krogans could appreciate. Literally if that's what it took.

With Tali, she made regular offerings, calm and placating. The CO never shied from rubbing shoulders with her crew; neither was she afraid of scuffing them up in pursuit of some valve or coupling or whatever else the quarian needed to delineate a place for herself aboard the human vessel.

And Garrus, well, it was a game where the next move was a raised starburst, staring back at him from the side of her bare torso, angry and red and mere inches from his face with only the memory of a long gone pain and the story behind it.

And then it was gone as her face reappeared beside him, dressed in a weary grin and brown splotches of rust and engine grease. Her hair stuck up in ways that he doubted was regulation with any force in the galaxy but it complimented the capable ferocity in her eyes all the same. It was the very look that pulled him, them, into her orbit in the first place.

“Gonna have to put in a requisition.” She admitted, rubbing at some of the moisture that clung to her brow, leaving another dark streak in its place. “As if she didn't make enough of a racket as is.”

Even then, Garrus couldn't help but incline himself towards her, and it had everything to do with their game and not the way his fingers twitched with the need to fix the imperfection that had been wrought there. If he wanted to win, he had to pay attention. If she noticed, she didn't let on, unless there was something to divine in the measure of her breath. Fortunately, only the Mako's company stood by, silent as ever.

“In the last week, we've suffered a minefield, a batarian ambush and one particularly spectacular drop into a narrow ravine. What's a little hearing loss on top of all that.”

That earned him an odd little snort. Her shoulders heaved. “That's why I like you Vakarian. Always know how to take one for the team.”

He hummed, thoughtfully, as though it were possible to put up some semblance of an argument. “You know, the council did impose a galactic speed limit for a reason.”

“Yeah?” It was her turn, sliding from her back to her side, and it wasn't just her joints and limbs but everything within her corona shifting to accommodate this new position that focused pointedly on him. “Then I think it's your job to tell that to the next drop ship that gets the jump on us.”

But there was no fighting that pull at all. “Anything for galactic peace and security.”

This is a game. The thought was muffled but insistent like the ache in his lower back from laying there too long. Moving, trying to push through it, invited a needling protest. He almost relented but defeat was an affront that no turian would suffer readily. So, gathering up a few of the tools from the job, he eased himself from the Mako's hold. Shepard was quick to follow and they both busied themselves with retrieving the remains of their refuse.

“So.” His voice was thrumming with a curiosity dissolved in the silent currents of of the shuttle bay.

“So?” Her human voice was flat in turn, expectation palpable only in the deliberate way she didn't regard him.

“Your waist. Left side.”

He almost missed the whisper of a smirk before the vehicle swallowed her again, in pursuit of a stray screwdriver. “Whose left?”

Turians couldn't exactly roll their eyes -- no one would notice if they did -- but every day was a new lesson in understanding the gesture. “Yours.”

“Ah. Finally caught that one huh?”

He hummed again then nodded assent when he remember the tone would be lost on her. “Looks pretty ugly.”

As she reappeared and settled down against one of the six wheels -- he occupied the space next to her in kind -- she turned the tool over in her hand a few times before tossing it into a pile of some others. Her head fell back with a sigh and one hand drifted to the scar blooming across her abdomen. Idle fingers traced its outline as reverently as one might scry some decrepit text, long forgotten but replete with implication. She closed her eyes and he imagined the words coagulating into a solid memory. “A shotgun'll do that to you.”

“No.” The disbelief was expelled before he could restrain himself, envisioning the kind of damage her modded eviserator could wreck on the flimsy human body; spirits he'd seen firsthand the way that kind of slug and shrapnel could snap tendons and cleave its way clean through unprotected flesh.

“Well. Maybe not you with your built in armor.” She teased, poking at him.

He huffed and leaned deliberately away. “Doesn't work like that that. I've still got no interest in being on the wrong end of one, point blank.”

That earned him a clipped laugh. “Then what the hell are you doing here, Vakarian. You should know I only accept the most willing and well seasoned of masochists.”

“I worked for C-Sec didn't I?”

It was over. She came completely undone. This time the laugh was a real one, genuine, that began as a warmth in her voice and spread to the lines of her face and the light in her eyes and even the way her shoulders seemed to unknot at the sound. He wondered, not for the first time, if the human body was made for unabashed expression.

In response, his mandibles merely flickered at the small victory and maybe the bright blue of his eyes were enough to mirror her own. “So.”

She leaned in and this time he didn't turn away. Gravity was a funny thing; there was no fighting it. “Friendly fire. First mission with some fresh recruits that went sideways. It was supposed to be a simple drop and grab but this one kid. Firelli? He was barely old enough to serve. Good kid but spooked himself when he tripped an old cryo container. And... well...” A shrug. A grin. A you can imagine the rest.

He could. Even if he almost couldn't believe it. If this were skyllian five, he'd be weighing his odds on calling her bluff. This was a different though. The strategy remained, along with the quiet, careful observation. But the end of the day would be won by truth, rather than deception.

“I was lucky.” She continued “Missed vital organs by a hair's breadth. I was back in the field in a month. Give or take.”

Garrus nodded appreciatively at the not quite bluff, more lie of omission, they were both all too familiar with -- much to the good doctor's chagrin. The same lie that kept his shoulder smarting after a rogue shot during that last ambush. He gave it an experimental roll. “I imagine he didn't last long.”

She shook her head. “On the contrary. Like I said. Good kid. He took it to heart. There's a first time for everything. But he made damn sure that one was his last. Last I heard he was serving on the Warsaw.” There was pride in those words along with the look she turned on him, one Garrus tried to pinpoint exactly where he’d seen before.

But before he could catch himself staring, she was already lifting her piece. “Alright my turn.”

She considered him carefully and though her arms still rested comfortably on bent knees, head still inclined toward him and smile fixed firmly in place, her whole demeanor had shifted with the slant of her eyes and the way she rolled her fingers as if she were toying with a pawn, considering the best place for it on the eight by eight grid of their life stories. The move was calculating but if he had learned anything about the quirk of her brow then it was saying she already knew.

Shifting under her scrutiny, he cocked his head in respectful inquiry.

“Your neck.”

He blinked once and once was enough to shift the tide in her favor. “Neck?”

“You know.” Lifting one hand behind her head, she outlined a vague shape.

“My cowl?” With a scoff, he aimed for unimpressed, even as he wondered where she would have seen it. And when. “I don't suppose it's too much to ask that you learn the first thing about us if we're supposed to be working together. Commander.”

As consolation, she offered a dismissive wave. “I know plenty about you, Vakarian. Point is, it looks like you lost a fight with a lawn mower. Don't tell me those are standard hierarchy issue?”

Garrus couldn't roll his eyes but he could give his head a little roll in faint mockery of the gesture. Insults needed no translation.

"Pack of varren actually. And C-Sec. Not... that C-Sec is employing feral varren. You know what I mean."

He finished in a rush but there was nothing rushed about the way he saw her now in the low, humming lights of the hanger, a sidelong glance lest she catch him again. It was a good thing he did or he would have missed the way her lips parted and her stubby ten fingers tightened around her knees in what he could only imagine was anticipation. Then, with a breath, like a sleight of hand, it had passed, replaced by the omnipresent courtesy of command.

“Alright, I'm listening.”

If this was skyllian five the game would already be over, in her favor.

He folded, at the waist and pushed to his feet. The viscera of the mako and the implements of her surgery were strewn about in a haphazard orbit that outlined the limits of camaraderie. He made a show of making sense of it, finding a place for every stray bolt and socket or trying his best at the very least.

“Not much more to say.” His movements were practiced, methodical. “It was an undercover job to try and bust a fighting ring deep in the wards. The owner, Dekla Roh? A volus with a hand in everything you can imagine." He shook his head at the memory.

“Dog fights? Really?” Incredulous, she ran a hand through her hair though it mussed right back into shape as she remained raptly in place. “Shit. Just goes to show that the Citadel can really slum it with the best of them.”

"The color of the sky won't change the dirt on the ground."

A huff. "Poetic. You should try that on Williams."

Garrus entertained the briefest of thoughts, only out of respect, and then he gave his head another shake, this one lighter and free of the past. "Might have to make that an order."

"I'll consider it." Then, she raised her hand, all five fingers splayed and gestured to him palm up, all consent and command wrapped up in one turn of her fine boned wrist. At times, that was all it took, one look, one word, one bullet and her path was paved with seemingly limitless surrender.

And he was spinning, slowing, caught in an event horizon. He shuffled a few more spare parts about. "We just didn't have the dirt to nail him. All we were after was the intel. An easy job until some upstart took down one of his fighters. And then another. And another. Roh completely lost it. His thugs decide to take care of the guy and, of course, anyone else that got in their way."

She broke in with a faint sneer. "In a place like that, they're all complicit."

"Right. But the higher ups didn't see it that way. They had us break cover for... protection? Damage control? Hell I don't know. All our presence did was create more chaos. I was distracted, doing what I could just to keep up with Roh. This was still our best in, if we could just book him for one thing, anything..."

Bit by bit the floor was cleared with an increasing furor, everything tucked away and latches locked tight until he was left holding a piece of the broken manifold. It soiled his gloves with the corrosion and grime that lead to its undoing, the remainder to an impossible calculation that he had spent too long working out. He let it filter into the flanging of his voice, not thinking that it would be missed but hoping that it would be understood.

“...the house of cards falls.”

She had appeared, a solid presence at his side, and even as he registered it, her own hands, arms, dressed in the same filth up to her elbows, carried the other half of the manifold. Together, they dropped them in a pile of refuse. Her faced turned to his, still bearing the smudgy scars of their labor.

Garrus grabbed a rag nearby, used it to clean the worst of the mess from his hands before offering it to Shepard. And though his fingers twitched, he only pointed wordlessly to the streak cutting across her forehead. The curve of her smile sketched out her thanks as she scrubbed at her hands, her arms, her neck and then her face where the grease accumulated and blurred to a fine patina across her features, ash and grey and the convergence of stardust compressed into an affable density that limned the woman who wore them like a crown.

“So.” The rag dropped.

“He got away. Decided to... ah... release the hounds as you might say?”


End file.
